Diseases are often characterized by their unique molecular and/or genetic fingerprints. However, for many diseases, including cancer, this has yielded limited success; partly because there are many possible ways the molecular pathways in a cell may become pathological, there is much to learn.
Cancer is still a leading killer in the United States, despite decades of focused research activity on the problem. However cells, aside from being biochemical and genetic entities, are also mechanical entities which have physical properties such as elasticity. Diseases which effect the cytoskeletal protein network of cells (i.e. the structural integrity of the cell), including cancer, should naturally yield cells with altered mechanical properties (e.g. elasticity). This area of research is in still in its infancy, but recent research has successfully been able to distinguish cancerous cells from normal ones based on experimentally measuring an effective cellular elasticity (see ref. Guck et al., ref. Cross, S. E., Yu-sheng, J., Rao, J., Gimzewski, J. K., “Nanomechanical analysis of cells from cancer patients”, Nature Nanotechnology, vol. 2 (2007) p. 780-783) by optical means.
Existing techniques to measure the elastic properties of cells suffer from two main difficulties: 1) the technique is exceeding slow, making it difficult to envision translating into the clinical world, and 2) it is difficult to avoid mechanical contact with the sample, and so probe needle contamination is a real danger when measuring a series of cells.
Accordingly, a technique which can measure cells on a surface, which avoids damage to the cell, and which can speed up the technique to make it commercially viable, is needed.